The restaurant was quiet in the gentle way good restaurants often are. Soft jazz drifted through the speakers, glasses clinked lightly against plates, and the warm lighting made the whole room feel comfortable and calm. At a small table near the window sat Margaret Lawson, a seventy-one-year-old retired nurse who had spent most of her life in hospital emergency rooms.
She had ordered a simple dinner—soup, grilled fish, and tea. Margaret liked quiet evenings like this. After forty years of chaotic night shifts, ambulance sirens, and crowded trauma rooms, peaceful moments felt like a reward.
